LFU:online

The students will acquire basic methodological skills and will learn center methodological and methodical strategies of psychological research. They are aware of how scientific questions are being developed and they do have the knowledge of the main quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Right at the outset, the course deals with epistemological and philosophical considerations concerning the goals of psychological research: understanding, describing, explaining and predicting. Building on this, the folk psychology needs to be marked-off from scientific psychology. Subsequently, we will discuss the description of important methodological concepts of psychology. Furthermore, information about scientific concept formation, the basic principles of investigation planning, the sampling and the important methods of data collection will be given. Finally, quality criteria, ethical aspects and limitations of psychological research will be discussed.

Lecture and exemplary presentation of scientific articles.

Written exam

Döring, N. & Bortz, J. Forschungsmethoden und Evaluation in den Sozial- und Humanwissenschaften. Heidelberg: Springer

Heller, J. Experimentelle Psychologie. München: Oldenbourg Verlag

Suck, R. (2001). Representational theory of measurement. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 9442-9448.

Basic knowledge of statistics and probability (written summaries provided)